2021 National Biography Award finalists announced
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The National Biography Award, a yearly recognition of the best biographies and life stories across Australia, has returned for another year, with the State Library of NSW announcing the finalists for 2021.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Judges Suzanne Falkiner, Rick Morton, and Mandey Sayer selected six works to shortlist out of 101 entries.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With the winner set to be announced on August 26, here is a roundup of the shortlisted autobiographies and biographies for this year.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7843075/archie-roach.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/8ea1f6a7e50240c7a5735aae3a0ed503" /></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Simon & Schuster, Getty</span></em></p>
<p><strong><em>Tell Me Why</em>, Archie Roach</strong></p>
<p><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Tell-Me-Why/Archie-Roach/9781760854539" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tell Me Why: The Story of My Life and My Music</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is a memoir detailing Roach’s life - from his forcible removal from his family as a small child to finding his biological family and becoming the legendary songwriter we know today.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Roach’s memoir touches on love, heartbreak, family, survival, and renewal, and has won the 202 Indie Book of the Year Non-Fiction and 2021 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7843079/clements-lotus.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/3ffd7e60cf1b46d1bb6ff87019e2aba3" /></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Hardie Grant Publishing</span></em></p>
<p><strong><em>The Lotus Eaters</em>, Emily Clements</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Clement’s memoir recounts the young writer’s teenage years and early twenties, covering her time living in Vietnam. After a dispute between her best friend sees Emily stranded in the country, alone for the first time in her life, she decides to stay and attempts to combat her newfound loneliness.</span></p>
<p><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/the-lotus-eaters-by-emily-clements/9781743795699" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lotus Eaters</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> has been praised for its deep dive into a range of subjects, including body image, friendship, sex and consent.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7843078/kwong-moon.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/14cd1ca7800f4534b4bc6a8ebda28baf" /></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: HarperCollins Publishers</span></em></p>
<p><strong><em>One Bright Moon</em>, Andrew Kwong</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460758625/one-bright-moon/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">One Bright Moon</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Kwong details the trials he experienced as a child fleeing Chairman Mao’s China to a new life in Australia. Having witnessed his first execution when he was just seven years old and growing up facing persecution and famine, he and his family decided they had to escape. And, twelve-year-old Andrew would be the first to make the journey.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Critics have praised Kwong for his “startling clarity” and “profoundly moving” story.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7843077/max-miller.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/5b4d72b2976b404b9a726b591b9378e7" /></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Allen & Unwin</span></em></p>
<p><strong><em>Max</em>, Alex Miller</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A tribute to Miller’s friend, Max Blatt, </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/other-books/Max-Alex-Miller-9781760878160" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Max</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> follows Miller’s journey as he pieces together Blatt’s life from the Melbourne Holocaust Centre’s records to his former home in Poland. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><em>Max</em> </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">explores the subjects of friendship, memory, and history that critics describe as a “compelling and tender story of one man’s hidden history”.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7843076/truganini-pybus.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/396a7b91980240358009a931877c4fd8" /></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Allen & Unwin, Cassandra Pybus / Twitter</span></em></p>
<p><strong><em>Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse</em>, Cassandra Pybus</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pybus, an award-winning author and historian, has pored over eyewitness accounts to tell the story of Truganini, who has since become widely referred to as the ‘last Tasmanian’ in a perpetuation of the myth of the extinction of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture.</span></p>
<p><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/other-books/Truganini-Cassandra-Pybus-9781760529222" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> recounts Truganini’s story of journeying around Tasmania with self-styled missionary George Augustus Robinson to help him try to negotiate an end to the violence between white colonists and Indigenous Australians.</span></p>
<p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7843074/wong-margaret.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/b85afede9d5e46b6b5b3abaf635c7369" /></p>
<p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Black Inc Books</span></em></p>
<p><strong><em>Penny Wong: Passion and Principles</em>, Margaret Simons</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Journalist Margaret Simons has penned the first biography of Senator Penny Wong, tracing her story from her early life in Malaysia, to becoming a student activist in Adelaide, and her time in parliament. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In <em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/penny-wong" target="_blank">Penny Wong: Passion and Principles</a></em>, Simons includes exclusive interviews with Wong and her Labor colleagues, as well as parliamentary opponents, close friends, and family members, to provide an insight into the Australian politician’s life.</span></p>
